Went back to Kettan tonight in the next scene, “Where The Bodies Ain’t Buried,” and to a neat mystery for her and Will to struggle with…one that the reader is going to be in on, but that has some cool implications for things going wrong in a big way soon.
I got a little carried away—it was such fun to write fiction again after a week without. Wrote 1092 words, and I’m pretty happy with what I got.
Hoping to be regular with smaller word counts the rest of this week, but things are such an incredible zoo right now I can’t be sure I’ll manage that.
I’m getting LOTS of writing done. 3-4,000 words a day. It’s just not fiction.
If you’re doing WABWM, how are your words coming?
{ 68 comments… read them below or add one }
Must be getting crazy there! How many projects ARE you working on daily basis? HTRYN, Talysmana, DtD and the other teaching stuff right?
Amen on the fiction being fun as hell. My tournament chapter is almost done and the damn thing is almost 10,000 words….it was a single-paragraph montage in the script. But since it only blew up on me because the characters decided to steal the show I think i want to keep it. I was terrified of my book ending up huge, but I went back and looked at the script/game plan and realised a lot of what I had labelled as ‘chapters’ in the script were short, single scenes.
Then again, so was that tournament. So there’s only one way to find out just how big this is gonna be; keep writing!
HTRYN, TalysMana, the Crash Revision Workshop for SavvyAuthors.com, site content for MoneyToWrite.com, which I’m slowly getting together, stuff in the background for RebelTales.com. Plus income tax stuff and trying to find a more affordable place to live.
Some personal stuff too—it’s been a rough week for relatives.
679 Words.
My MC is exploring the magic side of the Hunter Legacy, trying to create a net to catch the annoying neighborhood demon.
362 words on ET.
New POV, Shade, introduces himself to Amanda. I’ve written the start of their dialog, but I’m not sure what’s supposed to happen yet. So I didn’t write anymore, would have just been more meaningless dialog. I’ll just have to think on it.
418 for 1 of 2 epilogue scenes, mostly because I took a personal day off work (had a dr apt). Nothing like cleaning and decluttering your home with some fun music to get the muse going!
I can’t wait for the next TM installment!
Holy cow I can’t imagine juggling as many writing things as you do. My brain just shuts down on me after a while, lol.
Speaking of, I struggled tonight trying to get words down. Yesterday I had to stop myself as I started late and needed to get to bed. Tonight, I had a hard time just getting to the 250 word count. Actually got 279. sigh. Female char Ayana has hunted down Main Male, Cale and insisted on his attention. But that’s as far as I’ve gotten.
Hoping tomorrow will be better.
I have a system. I do the hardest things first—the things that MUST be done on schedule and at certain dates and that other people are counting on me to deliver.
Next I do the things that I have to do but that have a bit of give in the scheduling.
Then I do the things I want to do.
TalysMana is a deadline-free want-to-do project, so when everything hits the fan at once, it ends up sidelined, as it did last week.
318 Words, finishing the scene from last night.
It’s all very thin even for me, but I think I hit the high points. . .And Sam got a nice little surprise at the end.
Most of my characters are done now – just a handful that I’ not sure are relevant enough to justify me going through the full character development process with them. Got some more world work done yesterday, too, and have most of the social organisation in my two main cultures worked out.
829 words on monday, start of a new scene.
Erthel comes back home and confronts Maithel (the village’s spiritual guide, who helped her mother with the pregnancy and has always been family to them) with what she’s discovered, demanding an explanation for the lies she’s always been told.
Oh, and she doesn’t know yet what she’s going to get. But I know. Mwahaha.
My writing time yesterday was sucked up by an emergency doctor visit because I couldn’t breathe. I thought I was coming down with pneumonia; turns out I have asthma. Anyway, now I can breathe again.
It was foggy this morning so I took some pictures. If I can get them developed I might post a few; they’re a little erie. Park bench at the edge of the lake looked like a seat overlooking a deep white abyss, for example. It was spring full-cloud fog, not the fun fall low-area fog, but it was still pretty sweet.
I did get 1307 words on a paper, plus another 154 on the PSA, but they don’t technically count as fiction.
Ack! That sounds seriously scary. Sorry about that Liz. Are you feeling well today?
Yep. I’m much, MUCH better. Air is a good thing.
Well, the photography place “tried” to develop my fog pictures and decided there was nothing on the roll.
Guess I’ll just have to remember them and write them really well.
So, three pine trees in pre-dawn light, backlit by a streetlamp that’s not in the shot, but the light shines through the fog and makes the trees look like they’re covered in gold dust.
A park bench at the edge of the lake, with a cherry tree on either side, framing it, about fifteen yards from the shore. The shore is large rocks, about the size of small chairs, and the lake is frozen for the winter. Snow has piled on the ground and on the lake, but the warm weather melted it off the rocks. The fog closes in, so the trees, benches, and people farther down the shore are invisible. The fog matches the snow on the lake and shore exactly, and with the rim of rocks, the scene looks like there’s a seat at the edge of infinity.
Well, I tried. :S
I’m glad you’re okay now. That’s pretty scary.
Pretty much finished the worldbuilding yesterday. Now begins the process of pulling it all together…
424 words on tuesday. Erthel discovers that Mrs Wilversen wasn’t entirely saying the truth about her mother – but simply because there was something she didn’t know. I’m not going to spoil that, but Erthel’s mother looks more and more like a stranger to her own daughter. Erthel is hurt, both from the lies and from seeing what her mother was going through back then. And this is not going to end soon.
Tournament scene is finally done, and just when I thought it wasn’t going to surprise me any more, it dropped a bombshell on my MCs. The princess was saved from a sticky misunderstanding…by the villain. Who took her shopping.
And the hero’s glorious knightly victory at the joust, in front of the new King…backfired on him horribly. For political reasons the king was obliged, against his own feelings, to crush the MC’s dreams underfoot in front of half the world’s nobility. And the hero’s attempt at a chivalric display of devotion to his childhood friend / love interest also backfired, leading to her being humiliated, lashing out in public and causing a massive scandal before fleeing in tears and vowing to never let him see how she felt again.
I ought to mention that the Simple Plan in my plot outline was that the heroes do something cool and impress the King.
… *scratches the back of his head, grinning weakly*
Oops?
Yeah, opsss. But this is a good ops it seems. It sounds more interesting than just impressing a king.
The villain took the princess shopping?
Man, when do I get to read this story of yours?
Say now, please ^^
Wish I could, but I think ‘soon’ is gonna be it: I have a hard but entertaining slog ahead of me before this monster’s ready.
It sounds awesome, so of course I want to read it.
But still.
If you need a beta reader/proofreader further on, I’m offering. I’m no pro at writing…yet.
I may have to take you up on that! Will keep it in mind.
NICE conflicts.
320 words starting chapter 2 ! I thought Chapter 1 would never end as I kept getting more unexpected scenes. But it seemed like I needed to give some background before getting to the meat of the story.
Being regular with smaller word counts sounds like a good idea. I’m going to shoot for that too!
1013 words out of nowhere!
It was a pretty much unplanned scene where my MC was supposed to be preparing for a nasty situation she saw coming, but then her mother showed up and called her on some things she had glossed over in the previous scene. . .
And I like it, I really do. It’s the best scene I’ve written between the two of them, the most natural-feeling.
Oh, and I meant to post this last night, but my internet is fritzy, so until it’s fixed my posts are going to be alittle irregular. . .
Averaging 500-600 wpd, five days a week. Carefully toeing the line between following my plot board and allowing my SubC to interject new ideas – intertwined bad-guy conspiracies keep cropping up.
I’m writing a fantasy as if it were a thriller – which has both positive and negative impact on the format. Hopefully, if I balance it properly, it will be more glimmer than gloom.
I read something interesting somewhere. (Sorry, I’m notoriously bad at remember where I read things.)
And that is that Fantasy isn’t really a genre, it’s a setting. If you look through the whole Fantasy section you’ll notice there are murder mysteries, romance stories, horror and all the like. All fantasies.
So what you have is a thriller in a fantasy setting.
Well, at least when I read that fantasy was a setting (I adore fantasy!), it resonated with me.
What you read is true. And one of the things I love about fantasy.
So I’ve been procrastinating (watching the evil box instead of working on WIP). wwwaaaahhh. time I’ll never get back.
It’s really nice to come here and see how well everyone is doing. All of you are making really good progress and I’m hoping it inspires me to apply butt to seat.
(and feeling all wistful about taking the Holly courses.–grrr… le sigh…)
84 words written in 5 mins yesterday.
I wish I could write that fast all the time, then I’d have a finished manuscript in no time. 
I decided to challenge myself, I knew my friend was going to call any minute, but I was also pretty sure I wouldn’t have time to write if I didn’t write then. So at least I got something done.
Intermittent application of butt to seat has led to intermittent addition of words. it’s like the not-so-secret decoder ring. show up and stare at the cursor. eventually something will happen.
901 words. scene is keeper. something interesting happened. yay. mission accomplished. thank you, muse.
Worked on some of the critical and pivotal history/backstory yesterday. I need to figure out what exactly the crucial event was a hundred years ago that shifted the balance of power and marginalised a culture. If I can get that right by the weekend, I’ll be thrilled.
It sounds like you’re doing a LOT of research for this before setting out. I’m sure you’ll appreciate it when the time comes! I’m suffering from a lack of detailed worldbuilding right now in mine. x.x
This is post-first draft research. I’m filling in the holes!
lmao. Oh. Ouch. That’s what I’m probably going to have to do as well…I’m curious, how hard is it to do that?
Do you think it’ll drastically change the direction of your story?
I don’t think it’ll change the direction of the story, but it will provide some nice details to scenes, and perhaps things for people to refer to culturally in conversation. Hopefully this will help me foreshadow places and cultures that I might use in the sequel. I’m mainly doing it to add believability to the story, so that it seems real. It’s not difficult, but it is more time-consuming than I had anticipated.
336 words on wednesday.
Erthel is now getting the big picture of past happenings and the reason for her mother’s lies. For the first time in a long time, she really feels like she understands her – and she knows they’re much more similar than what she’d like to admit.
364 words.
A scene -not planned- but it made me smile, so I wrote it anyway. The twelve year old MC tries to make biscuits for his young guest. It’s the only magic he knows.
531 words on ET.
Amanda and Tamora makes up (they had a fight) and Tamora introduces Amanda to her friends. I hadn’t even planned for them to make up but suddenly Tamora knocked on Amanda’s door.
Finished the other paper– 1668 words, and the last 168 were pushing my limits a little. So even if writing for school doesn’t count for WABWM, I think I’ve figured out my target number of words per day. If 1500 was good, I’ll aim for an even thousand, so I can go over without worrying about it.
I also put another 518 words into Owls. I saw the tail of a theme sticking out so I pulled on it to see what would happen, and I got a scene where the character decides that the wise woman was wrong (now there’s alliteration for ya!) and then continues her journey rather than staying in the sacred grove for another night. I also brought up the question of what owls mean in the story, but I haven’t answered it yet. I think it might be bigger than I was expecting.
It’s really encouraging to see how far you all are getting–I know I sound like a teacher, but it’s true! It’s great to see everyone getting past the tough writing spots. Keep up the fun!
: D
*Yawn!*
Super tired now. Procrastinated the past 2 nights with the writing and just went straight to bed. So I decided I would make up for the lost time tonight. A total of 752 words!
I even got myself out of a tough writing spot in the middle of the session. Had to delete and rewrite until it sounded half decent, but it worked itself out.
Cale is going to be in for a surprise!
Glad to see everyone is doing well with their work as well
Congrats to all!
664 words. My muse surprised me today. It’s very disturbing when you suddenly realize your subconscious has snuck in bits of real life [note: coping method was to stuff feelings down where they can't get to you] into story so MC has to deal with what you don’t want to face.
Once again, I went: What happened to my scene? Why is it so dark? Why is my MC acting all serious about this issue? Most importantly: What happened to my fluffy bunny story??!!
Then, just now, I put it together. So I am backing away from the keyboard. It’s very ripple-y and I need time to adjust to the idea.
656 words tonight.
Sam skips class to meet with the leader of the werewolves who is going to give her some useful intelligence. . .
This whole thing with the wolves was completely unplanned, it sprung out of a scene that sort of twisted on me, and it keeps getting bigger. I like most of it, but it seems like it’s eating my book.
A little bit more world-building, put a short-term paid job hijacked my day and probably will hi-jack the weekend. Hoping to get some backstory completed regardless.
about 2,500 last night on Chapter 12, so named as I’ve decided to split the chubbier chapters up for a more even chapter spread. Nothing so far tonight, doing some work for a friend and preparing for my kids (all 300 of them – I work at a Japanese junior high school) to graduate. Sosugyosei, omeideto gozaimasu.
But I am coming up to an exciting, exciting scene – the heroes’ first face to face with the serpent-eyed warrior who’s been tailing them since Page 1.
Their comfortable world is about to explode.
Do you write in Japanese or English? Just curious.
I know curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back. ^^
lol, I like that saying, I’ve never heard the second part!
and I’m curious now too!
lol english. I can’t read or write Japanese very well. Spent all my time writing books and building castles instead of studying
468 words.
Chugging along and happy to be writing.
I’m feeling I haven’t described my characters enough. Maybe I’ll try and do that with tomorrow’s words-and try to slip it in without anyone noticing. I don’t want to forget what they look like!
gah… no work tonight it looks like. wait, no 208 words. hey, that’s something.
so currently I am rewriting yesterday’s partial scene to go in a different direction. I realized it left me in an “Inner Reader” is bored state and I couldn’t get my Muse to show up. So far much happier. Although plotting is so freakin’ hard (I know, preaching to the choir). LOL. It just helps so much to come here and vent.
1085 words, and again, I have no idea where they came from.
Sam had her meeting with the Pack leader, they sort of danced around each other a bit, but it looks like an alliance is almost inevitable, which could be very bad for my Villain.
Now I have to decide, will the villain kill the Alpha Wolf before any alliance is finalized? Or will I have it close before she gets wind of it, making the attack too risky?
This would be a lot easier if I had planned for a pack of werewolves to show up in the middle of things. . . I always knew they were a presence in the universe but I didn’t expect to run into them so soon. . .
Maybe a day or to of re-planning is in order? or maybe I should just write and see? Suggestions, anyone?
Hmmm, this is a toughy cause I’m not sure how you write.
(so the time put in brainstorming yields me lots of dividends).
I always find the more I ask questions and brainstorm, the more toys my Muse can use while she’s works.
For me, if a scene/several scenes pop up when I’m not expecting them, I rejoice!! Yay
But then, if it’s not immediately apparent how to fit them in with the throughline for the WIP, I tend to stop and see whether I want to detour in that new direction or redo the scene so it fits in with the story I was already telling. (I”ve lost a few scenes that I loved because I just didn’t want to go down that road with the story. I saved them cause I’m attached and they did teach me new things about the characters. LOL)
But werewolves, always awesome
How important is the Alpha Wolf to the story? How about the alliance–how will having one, or being on the verge of one and having AW killed, effect the story? What about the Villain? Is he (I presume it’s a he) strong enough to kill AW? Does he have to get AW off alone somewhere, challenge him to a no-pack-help duel, or take them all on? Does AW die right away? Is it an assassination or an out-and-out fight? Does the villain get his fice rearranged?
This is a great opportunity to show off the pack, their infrastructure, and why an alliance would be a good thing–or a bad thing. It’s also a great way to show off your villain’s multiple bad sides. I’m stopping here because if I don’t…well, my current WIP doesn’t have werewolves…yet…
The problem with the wolves. . .
This is the first time I ever wrote with any kind of preplanning at all, and the thing is that everything is going pretty much to plan
. . . except the wolves.
They started out as a bunch of tough kids that my villain contracted to mess with my MC. I sort of wondered why she kept referring to them as wolves, but I thought it was innocent, My villain isn’t quite sane so I don’t really pay attention to her rambling, lol.
So a couple days go by while I basically ignore the Pack (I knew I would have to deal with them, but wasn’t sure how) then My Muse slaps me upside the head and says “DEB!!! They’re REALLY Wolves, ya know? Werewolves??”
And the trouble started.
If my Villain kills the Alpha. . . The Pack might scatter, which would put me back on track and tick my MC off royally.
Or the Pack might pull together under my Villain, making her a pseudo-Alpha. . .which might be interesting since I always planned for her to escape at the end of this book and continue to make trouble.
If my MC gets her Wolf Alliance. . . The Alpha will be able to expose the Villain, which was never part of the plan. And though the Alliance might be useful later on, the massive replanning won’t be worth it I don’t think.
So I guess he has to die.
Now I’m sort of depressed.
I’d say go where you’re hearts belong. If you don’t want the alliance, do the alpha wolf really have to die? Can’t your MC do a horrible faux pas (it’s that how you spell it?) or something similiar?
Of course if the alpha wolf has to die, he has to die. But there are always alternatives.
Or maybe the alpha wolf manages to royally piss off your MC, to turn it around?
Anyway, I hope you find a way that doesn’t depress you.
Hi Deb!
Sounds like your story’s heating up. Unplanned stuff like this can be a gold mine or a land mine depending on how it pans out, but it’s always exciting to have happen.
You’ve got a lot of choices here, my only advice is not to let too many secondary characters overshadow the very important ones (i.e the heroine and villain) but don’t be afraid of making the villain’s situation complicated too.
Or you could “mortally wound” him, have him crawl off into a hidey hole and start to recover, out of the picture but able to come back, and not dead. Silver bullets and all that. Oh, and I meant does the villain get his fAce rearranged, not his fice, whatever that may be.
Meanwhile, back on the ranch, my muse wants to throw werewolves into my story now. Imagine…werewolves in space, werewolves who keep their human part hidden and play at being tame timberwolves, werewolves who hunt owls for rituals in the desert… :O I’d better go knock out a short story and get these guys in their own WIP or they’re going to mess with me.
1132 words Ending with Alec the Alpha Wolfs Death
Moment of Silence please. . . .
Okay, I’m sad to see him go, but after reviewing all my options (Twice) it really was the only call.
My Villain is the sort of behind-the-scenes manipulator that makes it her business to know things: she wouldn’t miss the almost-alliance. And if the alliance was already sealed, she would probably have killed Alec the first chance she got anyway to make a point. So.
And I’m sorry Danizer, that I cursed you with my plot bunnies (puppies? lol!). Hope you get your Wolves sorted out!
It’s all good. I was stuck; my MC was resisting doing the thinking that he had to do to move the story forward. Playing tag with werewolves actually got my muse in gear and she dumped about seventy plot ideas in my lap. Not all of them fit PH2, but my MC just got smacked upside the head with a tree branch.
Meanwhile the wolves are in their own little world, and my other two stories are dancing off the page. about 700 words right now; not done for the day yet.
Friday got hi-jacked by paid work. Should be back into things on Monday, though.
I sat down to write a few hundred words and ended up with 936
Then I had an idea for a short story. I have never written a short story, and I thought maybe they were just not my thing. The 1002 words I wrote for the first scene proved otherwise! It’s just something for myself (as is pretty much everything I write) but I can’t wait to work on it some more. It will be nice to finish something-as I am in the middle of a loooooong revision, and the beginning of another looooong novel.
I may have to redo Chapter 12, or at least mess with it a bit before I move on. The king’s right hand man wants to have words with the MC, but him laying out on the table just why the king stomped our hero down seems to cop out somehow and I can’t figure why.
MC -does- need the kingsman to give him a reality slap, though, because his gallantry put the king and himself in a deadly political situation.
And the T. princess from the other plotline needs to show up for her chat with Kingy in the next chapter. So do her assassins.
…and none of this is actually the main thrust of the chapter. I can’t let myself get offtrack and forget how this chapter ends.
Dear Holly and Rebecca,
I guess this is where I am to post my entry? My content is exactly 1,000 words as asked, and I believe I formatted everything properly. I am older than 18 so no problems there. If I did anything wrong let me know so I can try to re-enter the contest. It was a lot of fun to work on, and I hope you can enjoy the ideas as much as I did.
God bless,
Michael S.
P.S. I’m trying to enter way before the deadline so that we can work out any problems if there are any.
http://michaeltulk.blogspot.com/2010/02/be-character-in-talysmana-contest-entry.html
450 words yesterday.
It’s so nice to be back here. I’ve missed you guys.
We missed you too!
Awww. Good to have you back too!